Nature Of The Beast: Why Game-Style Nonlinearity Just Doesn't Work In Blades

Author	Topic: Nature Of The Beast: Why Game-Style Nonlinearity Just Doesn't Work In Blades
Custer Bob's Big Date Member # 3151	written Saturday, March 5 2005 09:46 Profile Homepage #0 There has been a lot of argument lately about linearity versus non-linearity, to the point of the non-linearity faction getting downright militant about the issue, shouting down people who write articles against it and writing their own aggressively ignorant articles about what everyone else should do with the engine. This article is not telling you what to do. If you want to ignore it, that is fine; you might even somehow manage to make a decent scenario that way. It is just going to say what Blades of Avernum is simply not meant to do. Blades of Avernum is meant to provide a designer with a way to tell a story, preferably a simple one, through a dynamic world environment. Blades of Avernum does include dynamic-world-environment capabilities, but they are relatively limited. Scripting events, monsters, and dialog takes a hell of a lot of time. If this were not so, or if these things did not exist in the first place, or if they were dumbed down significantly, linearity would not be the dominant paradigm. However, those are hypotheticals. In the real BoX design schema, at some point there exists a conflict of resources. Anyone who's studied economics knows about opportunity costs: if you spend an hour making wristwatches, you cannot spend that hour making a grandfather clock. In addition to this, size is a resource. The ideal BoA scenario is relatively small; beyond some point, the entire affair grows a little mind-numbing and boring. The question is: how do we use these resources? Do we invest in a nonlinear world or a linear world? In plot terms, there is NO CONTEST here. It is IMPOSSIBLE to develop ANY solid atmosphere in a strictly nonlinear work; it has been tried and found wanting. The plots of nonlinear scenarios are often anemic and weak. In combat terms, there is also NO CONTEST; you can take twenty towns and fill all but three of them with random crap monsters for the sole purpose of entertaining morons whose sole attraction to BoA is the ability to crack heads, or you can spend twenty dungeons building up a single, overarching, AWESOME tactical challenge. Because of limitations in the engine itself, making nonlinear combat as potentially entertaining as linear combat is not possible. And in design terms, similarly NO CONTEST. You can dump hours and hours of nodework into putting little fancy tricks in every stupid random dungeon you make in a NL world, or you can invest that time into making a stunning experience for the player and a proud accomplishment for yourself. Overall, working in a nonlinear framework SEVERELY limits the capabilities of the designer, due to the plain and simple fact of limited resources. Because the engine itself cannot be radically tweaked to create new challenges and feats, every BoA scenario is mechanically identical; as such, there's no exceptional way to set any two radically nonlinear scenarios apart, nor any way to make a radically nonlinear scenario overcome the TREMENDOUS obstacles listed above. Comparisons of scenarios to marketed games is absurd because one has far less power to change the environment than the other. In a game, the engine does whatever you bloody well please. Try and remake Diablo II or Fallout in BoA, and you may just be surprised to see that it won't bloody work. They are two different ways of doing things. In BoA, you CAN make a good story, you CAN make interesting combat and dynamics, and you CAN make an interactive, breathtaking world. You CANNOT, however, make another Avernum, or at least you CANNOT without either sacrificing tremendous amounts of quality or sacrificing tremendous amounts of time. If you want to try, you're welcome to; just don't expect to wind up with anything remotely good. [ Saturday, March 05, 2005 09:47: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ] -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00
-silver- Cartographer Member # 995	written Saturday, March 5 2005 10:18 Profile #1 That's what I would have said if I had posted while sober. Except you wrote it better than I would have. Thanks. Posts: 206 | Registered: Thursday, April 18 2002 07:00
PoD person Shock Trooper Member # 4445	written Saturday, March 5 2005 10:46 Profile #2 Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. This is the most exceedingly rational, pragmatic thing I've seen in the whole mess. I'm normally a lurker, but I felt compelled to post an article so that other lurkers, who may be blessed with actual designing talent, don't feel pressured to waste resources in exactly the manner you describe because what I perceive to be a vocal, and stringently so, minority says so. Now that a more respected member of the community has made his point more eloquently and decisively than I had done, I think it's time to fade back into the shadows. Alec, you have proven why you are an extremely important member of the community, despite not having released as many scenarios as some others. Posts: 293 | Registered: Saturday, May 29 2004 07:00
Drakefyre Triad Mage Member # 7	written Saturday, March 5 2005 11:13 Profile Homepage #3 Actually, he's released more scenarios than most. It's at four or five by now. -------------------- "At times discretion should be thrown aside, and with the foolish we should play the fool." - Menander ==== Drakefyre's Demesne - Happy Happy Joy Joy Encyclopedia Ermariana - Trapped in the Closet ==== You can take my Mac when you pry my cold, dead fingers off the mouse! Posts: 9436 | Registered: Wednesday, September 19 2001 07:00
PoD person Shock Trooper Member # 4445	written Saturday, March 5 2005 11:45 Profile #4 Oops. How could I forget about Kill Ogre, Win Prize, its amazing continuation Kill Ogre, Win Nothing, and, finally, the near-orgasmic Sir Psycho Sexy? My humblest apologies, noble Alec. Posts: 293 | Registered: Saturday, May 29 2004 07:00
Drakefyre Triad Mage Member # 7	written Saturday, March 5 2005 15:02 Profile Homepage #5 Please continue the discussion in this thread. If you wish to reply to a post from this thread, please quote it. [ Saturday, March 05, 2005 15:03: Message edited by: Drakefyre ] -------------------- "At times discretion should be thrown aside, and with the foolish we should play the fool." - Menander ==== Drakefyre's Demesne - Happy Happy Joy Joy Encyclopedia Ermariana - Trapped in the Closet ==== You can take my Mac when you pry my cold, dead fingers off the mouse! Posts: 9436 | Registered: Wednesday, September 19 2001 07:00